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Yale project catalogs 1,000 photos of Great Depression-era New Jersey

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In this photograph from November 1936, federal workers construct a building as part of the Jersey Homesteads (present-day Roosevelt in Monmouth County, near Hightstown), a community formed as part of former President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. Yale University has cataloged and mapped more than 177,000 photos from the U.S. Farm Security Administration and Office of War Information taken during the Great Depression
(Russell Lee)

A new project by Yale University researchers has collected and cataloged nearly 177,000 photographs captured by the U.S. Farm Security Administration and Office of War Information during the Great Depression.

The project, known as "Photogrammar," places the photographs -- commissioned by the Farm Security Administration to show the extent of rural poverty -- including 1,100 across New Jersey, on a U.S. map.

This photograph from June 1942 shows John Seabrook and a tractor operator at the Seabrook Brothers & Sons farm in Upper Deerfield Township. Yale University has cataloged and mapped more than 177,000 photos from the U.S. Farm Security Administration and Office of War Information taken during the Great Depression Arthur Rothstein / Photogrammar

The photographs have been available in the Library of Congress and each one's call number is included in Photogrammar.

Cumberland County is the setting for the largest number of photographs in the state's collection, including agricultural workers cultivating fields in Bridgeton and Millville. Included are dozens of photos of the Seabrook Brothers & Sons farm in Upper Deerfield, including photos of the Seabrook family demonstrating harvesting equipment.

More than 200 photographs in the collection were taken in or near Hightstown, showing the construction of what is now Roosevelt, a community founded as "Jersey Homesteads" on 1,200 acres of federal land during the 1930s as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal.

Photographer Dorothea Lange took this photograph of an original Jersey Homesteads settler in June 1936. Lange's caption reads: "Accepted applicant for resettlement on the Hightstown project. Jewish-American. This man is already employed on the project as carpenter, working on the nearly completed first unit of thirty-five houses. He says, 'Will we succeed? Any people who will go through what we did--any people with such patience--will succeed.'" Yale University has cataloged and mapped more than 177,000 photos from the U.S. Farm Security Administration and Office of War Information taken during the Great Depression Dorothea Lange / Photogrammar

According to a Rutgers University collection, 500 acres were designated for farming and the remainder left for 200 houses on half-acre plots, a school, factory, poultry yard and modern water and sewer plants.

Photographs show construction of the entire community, including rigs carrying concrete slabs and workers preparing mortar in 1935 and 1936.

Later photos by renowned Depression-era photographer Dorothea Lange show people applying for land as part of the Jersey Homesteads and the opening of the community's garment factory.

"This man is already employed on the project as carpenter, working on the nearly completed first unit of thirty-five houses," Lange wrote in one caption. "He says, 'Will we succeed? Any people who will go through what we did--any people with such patience--will succeed.'"

Other photos included in the project show the GM Inland Fisher Guide Plant in Ewing and crowds at the Father Walsh carnival in Trenton.